Yes, I think the distance makes sense given that, especially in the beginning of the book, Gifty puts distance between herself and everyone. The only reason I lean toward 4.5 stars is because for the beginning and some of the middle of the book I felt a bit of a distance from Gifty. There was one scene in particular where Gifty speaks to Han and within that same scene flashes back to an earlier interaction with Raymond and my goodness, I had to put my Nook down for a second just to let myself fully appreciate Gyasi’s quality of writing. I think I literally sighed in pleasure (yes, I derive that much enjoyment from characters’ emotional healing/growth processes) reading Gifty’s gradual and powerful opening up to her friend Katherine and her lab mate Han. The way she used flashbacks to show how Gifty shut herself off from Anne and Raymond because she had not processed at all her brother’s death – wow, truly an insert chef’s kiss meme/emoji level of skill. I also loved, loved, loved how Gyasi portrayed how Gifty’s grief and trauma affected her intimate relationships. Her wrestling with religion felt so nuanced and so grounded within her own life unique experiences Gyasi highlights how faith and science can co-exist in a way that honors people of color’s worldviews while also acknowledging the benefits and applications of science. Even as an agnostic atheist, my heart clenched reading some of the passages about Gifty’s relationship with faith and how much it both meant to her and let her down sometimes. First, I felt that Gyasi did a fantastic job exploring the tension between religion and science from within Gifty’s perspective.
I will highlight two of the most standout features of this novel that motivated me to round up to five stars. All of these topics bled into each other in such beautiful and painful ways and elevated my investment in the novel. I so appreciated how Gyasi tackles so many freaking important topics yet somehow managed to do them all justice: science, religion and faith, addiction, racism, grief, and more.
Gyasi uses flashbacks to give us a closer look into Gifty’s past experiences with her family and how they have affected her in the present. We follow Gifty as she tries to figure out what to do when her mother comes back to live with her in California after a long stay in Ghana. Soon after, Gifty’s mother tries to die by suicide, before settling into a severe depression. The story focuses on Gifty, a fifth-year doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Stanford whose brother died of a heroin overdose after sustaining a knee injury playing high school basketball. Ugh yes Yaa Gyasi has the range and I love that for her! While her debut novel Homegoing followed seven generations, in Transcendent Kingdom we delve deep into one immigrant Ghanaian family living in Alabama, in the United States.
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